Mark Tanner sees Chinese companies producing things cheaper, faster and smarter than ever before. The impact goes beyond just changing how products are made or delivered - it is altering consumer behaviour

Chinese companies are producing things cheaper, faster and smarter than ever before. The impact goes beyond just changing how products are made or delivered – it is altering consumer behaviour.

Instant retail should be viewed as more than just a channel

The most obvious example is instant retail. Delivery has become so fast, cheap and widely available that it is shifting where, when, what and how people buy.

Consumers can now order everything from groceries and medicine to beauty products, alcohol, snacks and household goods, and have them arrive in under 30 minutes. In some cases, much faster. A consumer sitting in a restaurant can order a chilled beverage online and have it delivered in as little as 10 minutes, sometimes faster than an in-house bottle of wine might reach the table the West. That is turning many alcohol brands’ channel strategies upside down.

It’s important not to view instant retail just as faster ecommerce. It is altering consumption behaviour. It reduces the need to plan ahead, increases impulse purchases, and weakens the old distinction between “going shopping” and “getting something now”.

This logic is affecting frozen and preserved food. Fresh food or ready-to-eat products can arrive as quickly as defrosting something from the freezer, meaning convenience is no longer just about what is sitting in the ice box.

Hotels are another good example. Many resident restaurants struggle to compete when guests can order a vast variety food or drink online and have it delivered faster than room service. This has also made hotel delivery robots one of the more visible everyday uses of robotics in China. They solve the practical problem of keeping delivery riders out of hotel lifts and corridors, while still allowing guests to receive orders quickly.

AI, labour and the next cost curve

This cheap-speed model has been enabled by a mix of AI-optimised routes, dense seller networks, platform subsidies, brutal competition and a huge flexible workforce; workers in the “gig economy” numbering 320 million alone. But the model is already moving into its next phase.

As labour costs rise and China’s working-age population shrinks, technology will do more. China has been preparing for this for years, building scale in robotics, batteries, sensors, automation and logistics.

Humanoid robots that were once treated as futuristic showpieces are becoming cheaper and more practical. The price of humanoid robots has halved in the past few years and China now produces three times the number of robots than it has babies.

JD.com founder Richard Liu recently said the company’s 700,000 delivery workers will be replaced by robots “sooner or later”, and is already working to retrain workers for alternative roles such as robot maintenance. This is likely to see the next wave of channel disruption not coming from a new app, but from a new cost structure.

Cheap tech moves from niche to normal

This pattern spans far beyond delivery. China’s scale, manufacturing depth, supply-chain concentration and fast adoption of AI are helping lower the cost of technologies that once sat in premium, industrial or specialist categories.

EVs are the most visible case. BYD has gone from being treated as a China EV story to openly targeting Toyota’s position as the world’s largest carmaker within five years. The ambition illustrates how Chinese companies are no longer just using lower costs to compete at the bottom of markets. They are using cost reduction to make higher-end technology mass market.

The same is happening in less obvious consumer categories. Titanium, long known as a “space metal”, is appearing in more everyday products, from drinkware and outdoor gear to consumer electronics and lifestyle accessories. Infrared thermal imaging, once mostly confined to industrial, military or specialist uses, is now available in consumer products for outdoor exploration, health monitoring and pet care costing around ¥1,000 ($147).

Over 4,000 aerospace technologies have been adapted into everyday products in China, ranging from thermal clothing to freeze-dried vegetables. Chinese consumers are becoming used to formerly-futuristic, costly hi-tech entering everyday life quickly. This is changing expectations.

What brands should take from this

In summary, the standard for value is being reset. Fast used to cost more. Convenient used to cost more. Smart technology used to sit at the premium end of the market. Those shifts are changing everything from consumption moments, to expectations around tech in products and marketing. These changes will impact consumption in China, and will likely follow in much of the world in the way BYD has.

*Mark Tanner is the CEO of China Skinny, a marketing consultancy in Shanghai. This article was first published here, and is re-posted with permission.